The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

by Jean-Dominique Bauby

There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter—when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke.

I need to feel strongly, to love and to admire, just as desperately as I need to breathe.

And what about you kids, what will you carry back from this field trip into my endless solitude?

I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches the home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.

Nothing was missing, except me.

The city, that monster with a hundred mouths and a thousand ears, a monster that knows nothing but says everything, had written me off.

Had I been blind and deaf, or does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person’s true nature?

Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back?